The Nature of Mutations

Though a bit off topic I wish to add something.
I chose the analogy of Christianity having nothing to do with Jesus Christ precisely because it would be provocative to a Christian and because it is not supportable. It is wrong. However, this is exactly Phospho's stance ragarding evolution. He is claiming evolution has nothing to do with variation when it IS ultimately the study of variation.Phospho is not alone. Almost every creationist who has debated here has at some point made a similar claim i.e. that evolution does not have anything to do with population genetics (the study of genetic variation in populations) or Symansu's ad naseum incoherent and incomprehesible arguments that evolution should be separated from variation..or whatever he means.

I get the distinct impression that a lot of people are getting this from one or a few creationist disinformation sources and then parroting it widely.

cheers,
M

Hell Mammuthus, it goes way back to the false statement, "Mutations are ALWAYS deleterious and NEVER create anything useful." As they can not even consider the fact that proteins do not, despite the Aristotelian bent of the creationits, have an intrinsic property other than to act w.r.t. a catalytic or structural function based soley on their primary structure I would say that they have a Kuhnian block to their understanding of this key point. arghhhh, they have me sounding like the resident looney

hi
i agree Mammathus. we need a broad defination for speciation just like the one made for mutation.

Species is an important concept for classification, but in the context of evolution the term has to be permitted extreme flexibility. What constitutes a reproductive barrier and the degree to which it applies is fluid and inconstant in evolution.I think ring species are illustrative of the problem inherent in trying to use any classical definition of species with evolution. Let's postulate a hypothetical ring species with species names A through H. A is geographically adjacent to B is geographically adjacent to C and so forth, with H being geographically adjacent to A again. Let's further postulate that all species of the ring are reproductively compatible with any adacent species, but not with any species further away than that.This means that A can reproduce with H and B, but not with any other species of the ring. So one could argue the A, H and B are actually just sub-species of the same species. Except that while H can reproduce with A, it can't reproduce with B. Okay, so you reclassify and say that A and H are subspecies of the same species, and that B is a different species. But someone else argues that it is actually A and B that are subspecies of the same species, and that it is H that is a different species. And someone else argues for the original position, that A, H and B are all different species, which probably makes the most sense.But of course, now that you've decided that all species of the ring are different species, you can no longer claim to be using the classifical definition of species, the one that includes a reproductive boundary. And this is entirely appropriate for evolution, because evolution does not view species as static, but rather as a dynamic ebb and flow of currents of changing allele frequencies, with reproductive boundaries that are just as fluid and are a function of widely variable morphological and genetic compatibilities.--Percy

The only "ring species" I've heard about is the gulls around the artic. In that case the ring has a "split" in it at the atlantic (i think) the speices on the ends of the ring don't interbreed.

The Greenish Warbler is another example of a ring species. Ned's example with the 2 end sub-species being reproductively isolated is certainly the classical one.see

Irwin DE, Bensch S, Price TD.
Speciation in a ring.
Nature. 2001 Jan 18;409(6818):333-7.

Dear Percy,

Perhaps you would care to contribute further to the thread you started on speciation which has recently been revived.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 05-31-2003]

I think this might be a very interesting conversation to continue on the "emergence of species" thread. I posted a reply to Ned and Percy at this post.I didn't do it this time, moose. [This message has been edited by Quetzal, 06-02-2003]

Hi Taz,I'm up to my tusks in work so have been unable to follow the debates the last few days..long winded way of saying sorry for the late response. That is an interesting analogy for the creationist misinterpretations of mutation i.e. to call it Aristotelian.

It has come up a couple of times now i.e. Peter Borger and non-random mutations and now Phospho along a similar line of reasoning. Also, in a converstation with judge recently this subject came up. i.e. that mutations cause themselves in specific sequences by some unknown mechansim to pre-adapt an organism to its environment as opposed to how it ACTUALLY works.

as for resident looney...I think it would be hard for you or anyone else to dislodge salty from that title...though I notice Symansu is trying very hard

cheers,
M

The resident loony's Manifesto is being discussed at Brainstorms over at ISCID. Please join in. salty

I dunno ... I think my current line of discussion in the
'ghosts' topic is ellivating ME up that list

If you are still out there salty...how about providing the link to the discussion?
Thanks
M

Salty's thread is at this location .

Thanks WKIt appears nosivad/salty is getting badly trashed there by Pim and charlie d. regarding speciation and semi-meiosis...it makes me wonder why he asked me to join in since we danced that dance here before.cheers,
M

Isn't it funny that he makes the same basic arguments there - even the same basic posts, it seems - and he is still getting the thrashing that he got here.But his friend Nutty Borger has given him a cyber back-pat.What a pair...

I did not have the stamina to read through the 12 page long thread so I missed the Borger-salty tag team deluxe....that would be a real case of one up-man-ship in insanity I guess they will continue to cut and paste their posts from this forum to that one...